


rewrite. redefine

by t_3po



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Clones, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Never Let Me Go AU, Tarsus IV, Weird Plot Shit, clones man they're fucking clones who fall in love with each other, gratuitous but also fucking necessary hand holding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 02:18:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12666258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_3po/pseuds/t_3po
Summary: The most rebellious thing Spock has ever done in his life is this:He fell in love with a boy, using a heart that isn’t his own.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Knowledge about the book or movie isn't required to understand the story since I only took some elements of it but basically: they're clones and their purpose is to act as organ donors, that's pretty much it. Also this was supposed to be a one shot but I realized when I got past 6k words that I have to split this into three parts.
> 
> PLEASE DO NOT READ IF:  
> -You have a fear of death  
> -You're triggered by medical procedures and discussions of blood and violence  
> -Literally just avoid this thing if you're not in a good state of mental health like things get a lot better in the end but the overall tone of this fic is grim

“What’s the last thing they take away?”

 

“Hmm?” The doctor doesn’t look up from the PADD he’s studying. He squints, sets it down, then picks up another.

 

“Oh,” he goes when the silence grows too long and he realizes that a question was asked. His patient is staring at him, waiting.

 

“Oh, well, it’s usually the heart that goes last,” he replies and the patient blinks, startled by his tone. He could easily be talking about the weather.

 

Finally, he finds the PADD he’s looking for. He checks his patient’s file to confirm what he already knows: she’ll need a new kidney. He’ll have to place an order for a new one.

 

“You see,” the doctor continues as he types in his order with the easy manner of someone who's done this countless of times before, “Even with today’s technology, not a lot of species can live without a heart.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Spock is nine years, four months, one week, two days, five hours, thirteen minutes, and forty-two seconds old, he meets a James Kirk for the first time.

 

It’s a rare enough occasion that Spock sets his learning PADD down to pay attention to Mrs Eliza who’s introducing the newcomer. The first thing Spock notices about him is that his eyes are a very bright blue. They’re the same blue as the small patch of sea visible from Spock’s dorm high up in the north tower, a blue so bright it almost looks unnatural. He's deliberating on whether or not it’s an intentional design or just a manufacturing defect when Kirk’s eyes find his.

 

He smiles.

 

Mrs Eliza has him seat next to Spock even though technically, he should be seated in the fourth row with the other “K's”, right beside Melissa Kormack. Spock, being the only “S” and also the last member in his class, has been sitting alone in the last row for almost three years.

 

Kirk happily claims the chair beside him. Spock’s only just getting used to seeing it occupied when the boy sticks his hand out in front of him. “I’m Jim,” he says in a way that tells Spock it’s been practiced repeatedly, probably while standing in front of a mirror. “I’m nine and I’m gonna be a spaceman when I grow up. How about you? What’s your name and what do you want to be when you grow up?”

 

Spock stares at him blankly.

 

And then, he says, “I am Spock Version 3.0, Build number: T-255031, Size M, Class R.” The confusion on Jim’s face makes him pause, but he goes on, curiosity winning over. “And when I reach my eighteenth year, I will start my donations.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

These are the things Spock (Version 3.0, Build number: T-255031, Size M, Class R) knows:

  * He is not the only Spock in the universe. He doesn’t have much knowledge of what happens outside the lab because he’s never stepped outside it, but he does know that Tarsus IV is teeming with laboratories. There could be three of him right now in a variety of ages and versions, but nothing more than three every twenty years. He’s a Class R. They’re apparently difficult to manufacture.
  * He was manufactured for one purpose and one purpose only: to donate. The organs inside his body are not his own—not his lungs, not his kidneys, not the heart that beats steadily at his side. He will start donations as soon as he turns eighteen. It could be delayed if there isn’t a dire need for it, but that’s rarely the case. His species is known for being robust and for having a high pain tolerance, meaning he’ll make it through six donations before he completes, which is three more than a regular human donor’s capability to give away their insides. Spock will most likely live past 20 or maybe even 25 if he’s good at his job.
  * He is a Vulcan, or at least, the program’s version of a Vulcan. His previous versions’ genes were fixed, removing the superior strength and the touch telepathy—two things that could pose as a problem to the guardians. Spock’s version can only feel a faint humming whenever he touches skin that isn’t his own. Beyond this, Spock does not know much. The important thing to know about being a Vulcan is that his kind donates to Romulans instead of humans. The arrangement of his internal organs is different and his blood is green and copper-based. His ears and his slanted eyebrows are different as well, but Spock doesn’t pay much attention to the things that separate him from his mostly human peers. In the labs of Tarsus IV, all donors are the same at the end of the day: they’re packaged meat ready to be bought by whoever pays enough.
  * He will never grow up. He will never live a life outside the labs. He will never fall in love. This is his life, short as it may be. Counting down years—then months then weeks then days then minutes then seconds—until he reaches the age when he does his duty.



 

* * *

 

 

Jim (Version ??? Build Number ??? Size M Class R), at first, does not believe him when Spock explains. They put him in Spock’s dorm and for several days, he sulks, glaring at anyone who tries to approach him. He doesn’t look at Spock, even though Jim’s bed is the one to his right, and the unfamiliar, unpleasant feeling of guilt settles over Spock.

 

The sulking lasts until one of the older boys in the dorm gets fed up; he grabs Jim by the arm and drags him to where their logs are. The database can be viewed through a large screen in the hallway, mounted on the wall near the main staircase. None of the donors ever use it; it’s for the carers who come by to whisk them away.

 

“ _Look_ ,” the boy snarls. He grabs Jim’s chin and forces him to look at the screen where the number of donor residents are registered. Their names are filed under their respective categories: left to right, Class C to Class R. Spock looks at the screen and sees what Jim sees.

 

Louis Shen (3 specimens), Marius Pollack (5 specimens), Anita Reyes (2 specimens), S’chn t’gai Spock (1 specimen)…and there right below the Class R category with Spock: James Kirk (1 specimen).

 

Reality slams into Jim, and he sways slightly. The older boy grabs his arm to guide him to the floor where he sits, blue eyes staring at the screen in horror. The irritation on the older boy’s face has been replaced with pity. “How did you _not_ know?”

 

Jim as it turns out came from a different lab where they aren’t told about their primary purpose as soon as they’re old enough to understand what doesn’t belong to them. The Riverside lab was shut down due to lack of financial resources. “Well it doesn’t make sense to give them a normal childhood when they’re so replaceable!” was what the head of the Donor Program in Tarsus IV argued, and the board had nodded in agreement before sending Riverside a notice. The lab was closed and the children were transferred to neighboring labs, still unaware of their primary purpose.

 

“They were just being kind,” Tanya says. She’s one of the three Gailas in the lab but she chooses to call herself Tanya and asks everyone to do so, which, no one argues with because they’re all Version 2.5 Gailas, meaning they have the same features and voices. Besides, choosing a name for yourself is one of the few things you can actually do without repercussions. People in the labs do it all the time. Spock doesn’t simply because he has the privilege of being the only Spock there.

 

It’s Class R privilege.

 

“Really? Because I thought it was a cruel thing to do,” the boy who’d forced Jim to look at the logs says. They’re speaking in hushed voices, low enough that Spock can barely pick up their words even with the superior hearing that his version still has, but still, he sneaks a glance at the bed beside his. Jim’s back is turned to them, his face to the one small window where you can see a small square of blue sky.

 

“You raise a child, make him think that he’s going to grow old and have a family, and then the moment he turns eighteen you cut him up on a cold slab without warning? What kind of monster does that?”

 

Kindness, Spock thinks but doesn’t say out loud. Kindness is a concept that belongs to the outside world. It’s not for them.

 

Kindness is the monster.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jim is difficult.

 

He spits and bites and screams whenever the nurses take him to their biweekly physical. Spock hears him a couple of times during the few occasions they have their exams together—Jim continually screaming at the nurses, yelling “Let me go! Let me go I don’t want to do this!” Having never encountered a rebellious donor before, the few guardians stationed in their lab aren’t sure what to do with him. They can’t starve him or hurt him without damaging his organs and sedating him is out of the question because he fights back (on one memorable occasion, he managed to scratch a nurse’s face so badly that she’d bled and scared the younger children in the clinic), so for a few days, they mostly just let him be.

 

He can’t escape, anyway.

 

On the fifth day, Jim does not attend any of the classes nor does he show up at the dorm. The lab is large—five separate buildings that sprawl alongside a rocky beach—and has enough rooms for a nine-year-old to hide in, but Spock manages to find him before anyone else can.

 

“Go away.”

 

Angry, Jim’s eyes are the color of the sea before the storm. They’re wet as well and Spock politely looks at a point above his head while Jim wipes away his tears with the hem of his shirt. Before them, the waves crash against the sea bank, strong enough to crush a body. It’s a natural barrier which Spock believes is the reason why they’d chosen this location for the lab. The sea is as deadly as the electric fence that runs behind the lab, the one that separate them from the main road.

 

The only way to escape is up.

 

Spock squints and looks up at the sky. One lone cloud floats by, a smear of white against a pale orange backdrop. Ships rarely pass in these parts and whenever they do, it’s only to deliver supplies. Usually, the delivery is boxes of medicine. Things to keep their insides healthy, for those who’ll use them in the future.

 

Spock looks at Jim again. “Why are you not in class?”

 

“Because it’s _stupid_ ,” Jim growls. He picks up a rock and throws it at the sea. “Why should you go and learn things you’re never going to be able to do?”

 

“But the things we’ll be learning aren’t useless,” Spock points out. There are subjects like maths and sciences which Spock enjoys, but the most important lessons are first aid and basic healthcare, which to be honest, aren’t in Spock’s area of expertise. He’s not very good at the nurturing part and at nine he’s already developed a stoic expression that intimidates most of the other residents. There used to be a boy in the lab who’d been very good at lessons in healthcare, and he’d even been granted a two-year deferral because of his skill in medicine. He completed at twenty-one instead of eighteen, which doesn’t seem like much but must have made a lot of difference to him.

 

The bed Spock uses now used to belong to him.

 

“How can you just accept it?” Jim asks. His fists are clenched and he’s shaking. Spock carefully lowers himself to the ground and takes a seat beside him. Jim doesn’t move away. Instead, he hunches forward and covers his belly with his arms, face pressed against the tops of his knees. “I don’t want to give my parts away. They’re _mine._ The other Jims can give theirs away but these are mine and no one else can have them.” He looks up at Spock, his face challenging. “I’m going to find a way to make sure they won’t.”

 

It’s impossible. No one’s ever done it. And yet.

 

And yet Spock believes him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

His first surgery happens shortly after that.

 

He is nine years, six months, three weeks, two days, five hours, two minutes, and thirteen seconds old when his X-ray comes up wrong. The doctor holds the file up to the light, purses his lips, then jots Spock’s name down for surgery.

 

The laparoscopic cholecystectomy, according to the nurse who refills his IV, is a _minor_ surgery. Development of gallbladder stones is common in genetically modified Vulcans and since no one ever needs a new gallbladder, no one’s bothered to correct it—they’re more focused on removing the traits actual Vulcans have that can be used as weapons; who cares if the clones are in pain? They should just get used to it.

 

“Chin up, darling,” the nurse croons, patting him on the head. She disregards the way he shrivels away from her touch. “At least you already have an idea of what will happen.”

 

And that’s the worst part.

 

He is nine years old and everything _hurts_. He’s never given much thought to his body before but now he’s hyperaware of the pain coming from the incisions in his abdomen. If this is a minor surgery, then how badly will he hurt when they take away his other parts? He’ll have to go through this six times.

 

There are people who complete on their first donation. Spock can see why.

 

They keep Spock in the clinic for a few days, hiding him behind a thin white curtain that separates him from the groups who come by for their physical. He doesn’t expect anyone to visit because no one’s going to want to see what the result of a surgery looks like—no one’s excited to see what their future looks like—so he’s surprised when the curtain parts and Jim steps in, looking curious.

 

He opens his mouth to greet him but pain stabs at him and he hunches forward with his arms covering his belly, flinching. “It hurts,” he says. His voice comes out weak.

 

Jim’s face changes.

 

He toes off his shoes then gingerly climbs onto the bed, careful not to jostle Spock’s IV. It’s wide enough that he can sit beside Spock without them touching. For a while they don’t say anything, the only sounds in the clinic the humming of the heater.

 

And then, Jim says, “I want to run away.”

 

He looks at Spock. “You can come with me.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Later, Spock will mark that time in the clinic as the exact moment they stopped being just Spock and just Jim and became Spock-and-Jim. Long term friendships are uncommon in the lab because their time there is so short, and saying goodbye to a loved one hurts worse than a donation. Everyone is surprised when Jim latches onto Spock.

 

When asked what the purpose of forming a friendship is, Jim’s answer is simple. “I don’t want to be alone.”

 

When Spock is asked, all he ever says is, “Jim doesn’t want to be alone.” He doesn’t add that neither does he, not after having a taste of what _not_ being alone feels like.

 

There’s a part of Spock—probably a personality trait from his original that wasn’t fully removed—that tells him that he shouldn’t be so open to physical affection. And Spock rarely ever lets anyone touch him, but with Jim, he finds that he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind it when Jim pushes their beds together so they can sleep side by side, doesn’t mind it when Jim always sits next to him in classes or during lunch, close enough that their elbow keep knocking into each other. They take their physical exams together because they’d caused such a fuss when the doctors had tried to separate them (“The exams should be done in alphabetical order. There’s a large gap between the ‘K’s’ and ‘S’s’, don’t you boys understand?” “Yes but we’re not going to go through with what you want.”). They sit there on the exam table, side by side, hands holding each other tightly while stethoscopes press against their skins.

 

No one can make them let go of each other.

 

At first, the teachers and medical staff complain. But as soon as they figure out that having Spock near Jim means he’ll be less of a handful, they grudgingly accept it as childhood eccentricities. “Oh they’ll grow out of it,” one of the doctors assures them.

 

(They won’t.)

 

Jim attends all his classes, swallows his vitamins dutifully, and attends physical exams without complaint, but at night he talks to Spock of plans of escaping. Most of them won’t work but Spock doesn’t bother pointing it out to Jim because he’s positive that deep down, Jim knows they won’t work, and Spock doesn’t want to be the one to make disappointment appear on Jim’s face. Riley, one of the few residents who doesn’t have a copy currently living with them, mocks Jim relentlessly for it. “How are you gonna escape, huh? You’re a kid and even if you managed to get past the fence or survive the sea, you don’t know a thing about being able live out there.”

 

Riley is right, of course, and it annoys Jim but he holds his tongue. Riley is two months away from his eighteenth birthday. He’s allowed a certain level of self-righteousness.

 

“If we had a ship this wouldn’t be problem.” Jim brought a few items with him from Riverside, something that Spock had secretly envied—they share everything in the lab and Spock’s never claimed anything he doesn’t use for personal hygiene as his own. Jim’s most prized possession is a small badge that one of the Alices claimed looked like a guitar pick, and Jim and Spock had searched what a guitar pick looked like using Jim’s learning PADD, only to be disappointed that it did not in fact look like one. Neither of them have any idea what it is or what it’s supposed to do and their internet access is limited, but Jim keeps it with him anyway. The badge is golden, with a black star in the middle, and is obviously very, very old and according to Jim one of his teachers had given it to him as a parting gift. He likes to turn it over in his hands whenever he’s talking about his escape plans.

 

Once, Jim stuck it to the front of his shirt with a bit of masking tape and Mrs Eliza had immediately told him in a hushed voice, that he’s _never_ to do that or else they’ll take it away from him. Spock doesn’t understand what’s so important about an old badge and Mrs Eliza refused to tell them.

 

Jim only takes it out in Spock’s presence now.

 

Spock likes that. He likes being the only one Jim trusts enough to show him his secrets.

 

Midwinter, Spock turns ten and the occasion is marked with an update to his catalogue and an extra serving of dessert for dinner. He gives the extra portion to Jim. “Don’t you guys celebrate birthdays?” he asks. There’s frosting smeared on the corner of his mouth.

 

“No.” That’s an odd concept, Spock thinks. No one likes getting older.  

 

Jim frowns.

 

“We had cake and parties in Riverside,” Jim explains. “And the celebrations get bigger when you get older and you even get to travel when you’re eighteen and it’s cool. But…”

 

He sets the fork down, looking a little ill. “I can understand why it’s so special when you turn eighteen.”

 

Spock doesn’t comment on that.

 

The rest of the cake goes uneaten.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Riley says goodbye to them at the end of January. They gather around him in the dorm as he passes around the few possessions he has. It’s mostly clothes and Jim claims a plaid shirt that’s too big for him and an oversized blue toque for Spock that he pulls down until his pointed ears are covered. Before Riley leaves, he stops by Jim’s bed and asks, “Are you still planning to escape?”

 

“Yes,” Jim answers, defiant. His hand reaches out for Spock’s, and if Jim holds on to him too tightly, Spock doesn’t comment on it. Jim’s hand is sweaty. “We’ll run away together.”

 

Riley’s mouth forms a sad smile. “Well. Good luck with that.”

 

A week later, Riley’s bed is passed to a newcomer. A Leonard McCoy, which shouldn’t be special since the lab has had three Leonards already since it was built, but this one is different. He’s twelve-years-old and he has the same brown hair and blue eyes as the other Leonards but his face is strange—his nose is too long, his mouth too small, his eyes aren’t the right shade of blue. Occasionally, the manufacturers will experiment with the existing clone blueprints and change the design, but they often just change only one feature per clone. Jim, with his blue eyes instead of the hazel eyes the James Kirks are supposed to have, is an example of this. If they become popular enough, they process a new blueprint and become a new version.

 

Spock, although he’s never met another one like him, knows his previous versions’ faces were longer and more angular. He’s seen the pictures in the clinic, posted under Class R on the bulletin right beside the wall sticker of a whale.

 

This Leonard though is just. Different.

 

Spock, being Spock, points it out to him the moment he steps in the dorm. “Was there a malfunction when they were designing you?”

 

Jim swats his arm and tells him that’s a rude thing to say, even though no one else balks at the question. Good manners aren’t part of their lessons and discussions of manufacturers and design blueprints are normal. Good manners are for people who have all the time in the world to care about how others perceive them. The Leonard scowls at Spock. “No, I’m fine just the way I am. I have the same bones as the others like me,” he says in a manner that tells Spock this isn’t the first time he’s heard it.

 

There isn’t currently another Leonard in the lab but Jim gives him a nickname anyway. “Bones,” he calls and Leonard looks at him sharply. “Yeah,” Jim says, grinning to himself. “That’s a good nickname for you.”

 

He becomes a ‘friend’ to them. Spock knows Jim is his friend but Bones, he mostly just tolerates because Jim likes being with him and Spock just does whatever Jim wants to do, as long as it doesn’t get them into too much trouble. Bones constantly argues with him and calls Spock a robot whenever he talks about the Donor Program in his manner-of-fact way. He doesn’t know what lab Bones came from and Bones refuses to name it, but according to Bones his lab was more ‘ethical’, or at least, as ethical as it can be in the Donor Program.

 

Naturally, like Riverside, it was shut down by the Tarsus government as well.

 

He and Jim talk about their experiences in their previous labs all the time, about things foreign to Spock—like birthday parties and toys and television and football—and Spock _hates_ it. He grows to hate Bones who can make Jim laugh and easily erase his worries about donations with his stories. He makes pop culture references about Spock’s appearance as well, jokes about hobgoblins and Christmas elves that Spock doesn’t understand but ones that never fail to make Jim laugh.

 

It’s alienating.

 

But Jim is happy and Spock can tolerate Bones if he can make Jim smile because sometimes, Spock fails to do that.

 

He’s tolerant until Jim pulls out the badge and shows it to Bones. And then he starts talking about his— _their_ — escape plans, and Spock loses it. Jealousy lances through him, stabbing him where he’s soft and vulnerable, and he spring off the bed and out of the room, slamming the door behind him for good measure.

 

He doesn’t come back to the boys’ dorm until it’s long past bedtime. Jim and Bones are still awake, seated with their legs crossed on Bones’ bed. Spock feels their eyes on him as he creeps in the room. He slides into his bed and turns his back to them, pulling the covers over his head.

 

A moment later, the left side of the bed dips with Jim’s weight. And Spock gives in—he wrenches one hand out from beneath the covers to find Jim’s. “When we run away,” Jim says quietly. “I want Bones to come with us. You, me, and him.”

 

Shame at his own jealousy and humiliation makes him lash out. “We’re never getting out of here,” he says acidly, and Jim’s fingers tighten around his, hard enough to bruise.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The twelfth summer of his life, Mrs Eliza sends a new entry in their learning PADDs. Spock’s brows knit in confusion as he reads the file. Beside him, Jim squirms in his seat, then sets the PADD on the table, sliding it as far away from him as possible. Spock glances at him. The soft down on his upper lip looks golden in the mid-morning sunlight.

 

“What’s the point?”

 

The watering can hovers over the hydrangeas Mrs Eliza keeps by the windowsill. Spock watches as a drop of water falls. Beside him, Jim drops the question again, then adds,

 

“What’s the point of teaching us about this?”

 

Mrs Eliza blinks. “Why, to teach you about the changes your body will go through,” she replies, and Spock sees Jim’s hands clench into fists. He reaches for him but Jim knocks him away and shoves his own hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.

 

Puberty is complicated and confusing. It makes Spock too aware of his body. His voice changes and overnight he seems to have grown taller, his bones stretching without warning underneath his skin. His shirts become too small and tight so Spock has to go through the entire process of rummaging the clothes previous donors had left behind. He ends up trading his polos to sweaters that are too loose and pants that fit well enough around his waist but with legs so long he has to roll them up a couple of times. He supposes Jim is experiencing the same thing. No, he _sees_ that Jim is going through the same thing.

 

Jim’s body and face are changing and Spock only has to take one look at Jim's gangly height and the small pimples that dot his face to become hyperaware of his own body’s changes. They still have their beds pushed together even though Tanya says they’re getting too big for it and the older kids start making jokes about them that neither he nor Jim fully understand. Whatever they are, they make Bones laugh and no matter how many times Jim asks him what’s so funny, Bones only says one thing: “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

 

(Jim keeps asking anyway. Bones doesn’t seem to have a proper grasp of just how limited their time is; he might tell them too late and Jim—and also Spock—hates not knowing things.)

 

Puberty is confusing in the way that Spock has no idea why, when he looks at Jim’s sleeping face, so close to his own, he becomes hyperaware of his own heart beating fast against his side.

 

But for Jim it’s mostly maddening. It’s not puberty that’s making Jim mad, not that exactly, although Spock’s read that hormones do have an effect on temperament at this stage of their lives. It’s the file they’re meant to study _: Things to Look Out for As You Grow Up_. Aside from the title, there’s talk about sex, about reproduction, about starting families.

 

The last two are things they’ll never be able to do.

 

Growing up isn’t a privilege for donors.

 

“You do realize they’re just too lazy to provide a different material for us,” Bones argues in the authoritative voice he’s adopted ever since he turned thirteen and realized that his childhood is behind him. He’s not too past the awkwardness of puberty but, at fourteen, he’s already out of the worst parts of it.

 

There’s stubble on his chin. Spock thinks it looks weird. Jim, being Jim, tells Bones on a daily basis that it looks weird.

 

“Jim, you do know that, right? _Jim.”_

“Oh how would you know?” Jim snaps. He picks up a rock and lobs it at the sea. Spock doesn’t have to think hard about who Jim is imagining he’s hitting. Last week, a carer had taken away Gary Mitchel, one of the boys Jim had managed to befriend despite the donors’ unspoken rule of favoring emotional detachment. Jim hadn’t been fully okay with it but Gary had promised to send him messages from the ward where he would be staying. He only got to send one, shortly before his first surgery.

 

Gary completed on his first donation.

 

Jim hasn’t talked much about escaping since then.

 

Bones clenches his jaw. “I just do, okay?” He says it too fast, too quietly, and Jim pauses from throwing another rock, his arm drawn back. Bones straightens, squares his shoulders, then puts his hands on his hips, feigning confidence. He fools no one; he won’t meet their eyes.

 

“I signed up for carer training.”

 

The rock in Jim’s hand falls to the ground.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A carer's job is well, to care. They’re donors who only start their donations when they’re deemed unable to care for others, meaning that instead of completing at eighteen or twenty they can live up to thirty or maybe even forty if they’re good enough at their job. There are privileges as well. You can have your own car so you can go to different wards, travel and get things like toiletries or snacks for donors under your care, and you even get paid to do it. Training starts at fourteen, and being an official carer starts at sixteen. It sounds appealing and simple enough to do.

 

It isn’t.

 

Your primary job is to make sure people live long enough so they can lose just enough of themselves to give away. Jim calls carers glorified butchers.

 

“Why would you do that? What’s wrong with you?”

 

Spock sits between them, not speaking, not looking at either of them. He picks up a flat rock and turns it over in his hands and waits for the yelling to be over. He sets the rock down then pulls his toque further down his head until the tips of his ears are covered, ignoring the urge to just cover his ears completely to block out the screaming.

 

“Nothing!” Bones snarls. “I just wanted to do it.”

 

“You can’t just want this! It’s inhumane!”

 

“And what part of the Donor Program is moral, Jim? Nothing! Being a carer means that I can at least make someone’s last days worthwhile! It’s more than you can do with all your selfish plans of escaping and leaving the rest of us behind!”

 

Jim looks like he’s been slapped and the fury on Bones’ face is replaced by guilt. He opens his mouth, perhaps to take it back, but nothing comes out, and Jim recovers.

 

“Shut up! Shut up, that’s not what I want!”

 

“Yeah, well, I don’t think you’ve managed to get it in your head yet that we’ll never get what we want! _You’ll_ never get what you want!”

 

Jim freezes then glances at Spock and Bones looks at him as well. Jim swallows hard before turning to Bones. “How is wanting to exist as my own person selfish?” Jim asks. He sounds like he’s about to cry and Spock wants to get up and hold him and hide him away from it all, hide the both of them. He doesn’t move. “How can they make us and expect us to just do whatever they want?”

 

_How can they expect you to not want things for yourself when you live and breathe and talk just like them?_

 

“Because, Jim,” Bones says. “We weren’t made to do that.”

 

“Is that what you’re going to tell the people you’ll be caring for when they’re on their last donations? Pat them on their backs and tell them that they did their jobs well?” Jim fires back and the anger returns to Bones, his entire body pulling taut as he readies himself to fight.

 

Spock intervenes.

 

“Jim,” he says and Jim turns to him, automatically drawn to his voice. “He’s a McCoy.”

 

He sees them grimace, the way they often do whenever someone brings up the fact that somewhere out there, either already living or being born in the factories, there are other Leonard McCoys and other James Kirks. Neither of them like to be reminded that they’re clones; that there are others out there with their faces and their names, suffering the same fate as them.

 

Still, Spock presses on, ignoring their discomfort. “If you’ve read the catalogue—”

 

“I don’t,” Jim mutters.

 

“ _If_ you’ve read the catalogue,” Spock continues, “Then you should know that McCoys are naturally nurturing and make excellent carers.” Jim snorts at this and even Bones looks a little skeptical. “This was expected.”

 

Jim folds his arms over his chest and when he speaks this time, he’s the one not looking at either of them, “What about me? What’s the thing I’m most likely to be?”

 

“Kirks make excellent leaders,” Spock replies automatically and Bones barks out a laugh at that while Jim looks at him, stunned.

 

“But. Isn’t that a useless quality?” Jim asks. “For a donor, I mean. I…what am I—I mean, _we_ —Who are we supposed to lead?” Spock shrugs, not having the right answer to that. Most human donors should be categorized under Class C for common or Class UC for uncommon like Bones. He’s a Class R because his genes have to be modified constantly, in order to remove the threatening qualities of a true Vulcan. Physically, Jim isn’t a threat. But Spock’s long suspected that James Kirks belong under Class R because of the leadership quality alone.

 

To the Tarsus government, to the Empire, a James Kirk is dangerous. Only one of them can exist per lifetime.

 

“How about Spocks?” Bones asks. The tension’s gone from his body and he’s almost smiling when he eyes Spock. It’s a rare moment, Spock thinks, that he’s the one stopping them from fighting when usually it’s Jim who has to intervene in the middle of Bones and Spock’s daily arguments. He’s glad this almost never happens; it’s exhausting. “What’s the common Spock trait?”

 

“Oh I think I know,” Jim replies, his bad mood already disappearing, and Spock sighs and makes a show of appearing to ignore him. He doesn’t succeed. Jim plants his hands on either side of his face, making him look, and Spock gets a full view of the mischief in Jim’s smile.

 

His heart starts beating faster.

 

“Spocks are logical.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Later, when Bones is already fast asleep in the bed across theirs, Jim asks.

 

“Am I selfish? For wanting to leave?”

 

“No.”

 

_You’re just young. Young and scared and fear doesn’t leave enough room for anything else._

 

Jim is quiet for a while when Spock tells him this. It’s too dark to see his face but Spock’s long memorized his features. Jim, _his Jim_ , with his strange blue eyes and the white scar on the corner of his mouth which he’d gotten from fighting with one of the older boys. His Jim leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together, his breath hot against Spock’s face.

 

His version doesn’t have touch telepathy, but he doesn’t need it to know what Jim is feeling right now.

 

“I’m scared, Spock. Help me not be.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

A constant argument in the factories and universities that specialize in genetic modification is this: how much of a clone’s personality is influenced by genetic inheritance and how much of it is influenced by environmental factors?

 

No two clones are the same. In features, perhaps, and they have some shared personality traits, but not all of them _fully_ _act the same_. In Spock’s lab where there are four Alice Goswamis (an Alice Goswami is said to have tendencies to be very feminine, docile, and become good scholars) one of them has absolutely zero interest in academics and the other cut off their hair and asked everyone to call them, or rather him, as Patrick, which, none of the guardians make too much of a fuss about because their organs are the important parts of them, not how they wish to portray themselves.

 

Not their wish for individuality.

 

Spocks, according to the catalogue, tend to be logical and highly intelligent like most Vulcan donors. They are known to be hardworking, and can make worthwhile contributions in the field of science. As Spock (Version 3.0, Build number: T-255031, Size M, Class R) proves to possess all these qualities, he gets put in a different class where they focus less on healing and caring, and more on scientific phenomena. He’s pleased by this change, happy that his mind—which is the one vital thing in his body that cannot be donated and that he can call his own—is finally working to its full potential, when he realizes why he’s been put there.

 

It’s not enough that the Empire’s elite citizens need his organs. They want his contributions as well.

 

His mind, in this way, does not truly belong to him.

 

Jim is not in this class. Jim is not beside him, and for the first few days Spock keeps looking at the chair to his right, expecting to see Jim, only to remember that Jim isn’t here and that the person sitting beside him is just another Vulcan clone.

 

Jim, who displays high skill in engineering as is typical and expected of a Kirk, gets put in a specialized class as well. He tells Bones and Spock about it during lunch. “We mostly study ships. Lots of ships. And then we figure out how to develop weapons.” He pokes at the slice of meat on his plate. “It’s like we’re at war.”

 

A beat. And then it clicks and Jim and Spock turn to Bones.

 

“Are we at war?”

 

And Bones, who’s started his training and has access to the outside world—Bones who actually knows current events, Bones who won’t lie to them—bends his head until he’s close enough to Jim and Spock, three heads ducked over untouched meals.

 

In a soft whisper, Bones tells them the truth, “We’ve always been at war.”

 

* * *

 

 

This is what Spock (Version 3.0, Build number: T-255031, Size M, Class R) does not know:

 

The Donor Program was the result of a war.

 

Their originals had fought in it. They lost.

 

Spock wears the face of a rebel, as do the James Kirks and the Leonard McCoys and the Kevin Rileys in the donors’ directory. Because, when he really thinks about, when he truly acts the way he’s expected to be, acts like a typical Spock, it makes sense.

 

The Donor Program isn’t very logical.

 

It’s costly for one thing. Why would you spend years caring for a bunch of clones, providing them with food and medicine and shelter, when you can just simply grow organs in a lab without a host? Instead of waiting for them to stop legally being children before you slice them up? Scientifically and economically it’s illogical, but politically it makes sense.

 

Nothing can dismay a rebel group faster than seeing their most esteemed leaders mass produced, their entire lives catered to prolong someone else’s. It’s history being replaced, rewritten, and somewhere out there, there’s probably a database that has the name of James Tiberius Kirk listed as one Starfleet’s best captains.

 

But no one remembers that, or if they do, no one talks about it. A James Tiberius Kirk is a clone, something you can order once your organs start failing you. A household item, something that isn’t that important at all.

 

This is the 25th century, after all. Clones are normal, there is no Starfleet, and the Donor Program will continue long after Spock (Version 3.0, Build number: T-255031, Size M, Class R) has completed.

 

* * *

 

 

But even Bones who can leave the lab to attend his training at the wards where the donors lie in their beds and count down their last days—even Bones doesn’t know most of that.

 

Outside, it’s impossible to be unaware of the war. The lab is far enough that they can have absolutely no sign that there’s fighting. But in the wards, you see traces of it constantly. Bones had jumped a mile when he saw the number of patients being wheeled in the non-donors’ sections. Soldiers, mostly, and Bones had gotten the chance to see where exactly the donors’ parts went to.

 

The surgery was messy. Bones was ordered not to look away.

 

He didn’t. He’d wanted to.

 

“Was it anyone we knew?” is the first thing Jim asks when Bones finishes telling them the story. He’s not talking about the soldier. Bones’ mouth tightens and he shrugs then tries a smile that doesn’t sit right.

 

“Tanya made it through her third donation,” he says, using the cheerful tone all carers use whenever they talk about their charges. Bones hasn’t mastered it yet and it sounds horribly fake but no one mentions it. “She says hello and asks how you’re all doing.”

 

Tanya is an Orion. She can make it through a fourth. But Spock’s never heard of an Orion making it through a fifth donation.

 

Spock absentmindedly touches his abdomen, where his surgery scar is. Jim doesn’t fail to catch the movement.

 

He moves, reaching, and Spock meets him halfway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

This is what Bones knows: there is a war, there’s always been a war, and most donors live their entire lives not knowing about it because each lab is located far away from any major cities where the fighting is.

 

Ironically, the safest place for them right now is here.

 

They’re thirteen-years-old and no one dares tell them they’re getting too old to constantly be holding hands. No one dares pull them apart. They’ll fight anyone who even dares try.

 

Spock doesn’t want to let go of Jim. He never wants to.

 

Jim swings their hands together gently, squeezing reassuringly, like he can read Spock’s thoughts, like he’s agreeing with him.

 

And then Spock asks, “Do you still plan to escape?”

 

Jim shrugs at that. He’s thirteen-years-old and reality’s whittled away most of his dreams. “I don’t know.”

 

Jim looks up at the sky. The stars are starting to come out.

 

Spock looks at him and thinks about the nine-year-old who’d wanted to be a spaceman, who’d wanted to leave even before he knew why he had to.

 

“The only safe place is there with the stars.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“What’s the most rebellious thing you’ve ever done?”

 

Patrick Goswami looks at them blankly then, turns to the Alice Goswami at his right, their faces mirrored down to the fleck of a mole on their cheeks, then back at the row of faces whose expressions have moved from expectant to something along the lines of “Oh well, _of course_.”

 

Erica Fielding skips Jim because everyone in the dorms know what Jim was like when he first came to the lab and asking him what the most rebellious thing he’s ever done will take hours. Jim grins when she tells him that, chest puffing out in pride. Bones grabs a pillow and throws it at him.

 

She hesitates when she reaches Spock. Vulcan donors’ shared trait is that they have an almost unhealthy respect for rules, and Spock has thoroughly followed the rules of the lab: attend his classes, take his medicine, do his research. He’s not known for being rebellious.

 

But.

 

He does have one thing that, while isn’t fully against the rules, is still highly discouraged.

 

He looks down at his hand, joined with Jim’s, even here in the safety of their dorm. Erica’s eyes follow and they light up in understanding. She nods, then moves on to another donor.

 

His rebellion is quiet. But it’s obvious to anyone who looks.

 

* * *

 

The most rebellious thing Spock has ever done in his life is this:

 

He fell in love with a boy, using a heart that isn’t his own.

 

* * *

 

The organs inside his body are not his own—not his lungs, not his kidneys, not the heart that beats steadily at his side. Especially the last one. Vulcan hearts are prized for being strong, stronger even than the hearts of the Romulan soldiers who’ll take them and call them as their own.

 

Spock knows his heart will be cut out and be placed inside someone else’s body, and because it is his duty, he takes good care of it, swallowing his vitamins obediently whenever the nurse comes by with their daily pills. But the heart is the last part a donor gives away, and while their time is limited, it’s just enough that Spock can fill it with his love for Jim.

 

Love has no benefit to the Empire. He is a donor; he’s only meant to take care of himself so he can serve others. He isn’t meant to _feel_ and Spock, at nine, believed this until one James Kirk walked into the clinic, sat beside him, and told him, quietly, that he can run away with him.

 

He is fourteen years old when Jim kisses him for the first time. It’s chaste, an unsure bump against his mouth, and across the table Bones gawps at them before quickly gathering his things and moving away to give them privacy.

 

“If you want,” Jim says. He isn’t looking at Spock. “I know it’s not practical but…If you want we can. I don’t know...Date I guess.”

 

It isn’t practical. They’re young and their lives are ticking away and each decision must be made carefully to ensure that you don’t have any regrets. When they reach their eighteenth year, Spock, being older, will most likely leave the lab first. Jim will have to let him go.

 

Spock decides.

 

He takes Jim’s hand, and Jim smiles at him.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or fuck this is long but nothing in this chapter happens in the actual book so I probably tricked everyone into thinking this is an actual Never Let Me Go AU because I just made everything up in this chapter while still using the NLMG dysoptian world lmao like the stories are literally not the same. Get yerself ready for a plot twist you may or may not have seen coming.

On his sixteenth birthday, and to celebrate his ID going from carer-in-training to _professional_ carer (an upgrade that Jim had relentlessly teased Bones about, running around the dorm with the ID held above his head while Bones chased him), Bones gets a car.

 

It’s an old school pickup that must have been a bright red color at one point, but now just looks like it was dipped in blood and left to dry. The paint is peeling off in some areas, and Jim reaches out to remove a portion. Beneath, the rusted silver metal body of the car is no better. Jim appears to sense this as well.

 

He peels off another portion.

 

Bones smacks his hand away. “You’re ruining it!”

 

“Ruining it? It’s already shit!”

 

Jim at fourteen, swears a lot. So does Bones. The head doctor—a new one who’s transferred from a lab like Riverside—had become fond of Jim, treating him like a favorite pet, and she’d given Jim a PADD with shows that people outside the labs watch. Spock is told that they’re television shows, just like the ones he and Bones used to watch in their former labs. He and Bones have taken to hosting something called ‘movie night’, the PADD propped up against a cardboard box with the donors crowded around it, all of them sniggering whenever they learn something new. Fuck and shit and bullshit were added to their vocabulary, and though Jim’s tried to get Spock to swear as well, he’s never succeeded in making Spock say anything worse than ‘hell’ or ‘damn’.

 

But in his head, he can swear. Spock looks at the truck and silently agrees with Jim.

 

It's shit.

 

“It has _wheels,_ Bones! Those went out of style in the 24th century! And I bet it runs on gas as well.”

 

“No it doesn’t,” Bones tells him but he’s looking at the car unsurely.

 

It does have wheels, but it runs on water instead of gas which is slightly better and less costly, not to mention that gas stations went out the rage by the time the 22nd century rolled in. The car used to be a previous carer’s. Inside, it’s no better. The leather seats are cracked and the whole car smells like a mixture of old gum and lemon air freshener. They—or maybe the carer who’d owned it before them—had covered the steering will with glossy stickers of cartoon hearts and rainbows, and with a plastic butter knife stolen from the kitchens Bones starts scraping them off. “You can peel these ones off,” Bones tells Jim who shakes his head and says that it gives the car ‘character’.

 

“Stop annoying each other,” is the only thing Spock says when Bones complains to him about Jim and Jim shrugs, grinning.

 

“My true purpose in life is to be annoying,” Jim sighs dramatically, putting a hand on his chest and tilting his head to the sky, his eyes closed. Spock looks at him blankly and after a few seconds, Jim opens one eye to find that Spock, like usual when it comes to pop culture, doesn’t get it. “Oh, I’m just copying a character from that show we watched.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“What can I do to convince you to watch mindless television with us?” Jim teases, fluttering his eyelashes. Spock shoots him a glare but he leans forward and kisses him anyway, just to hear Bones’ usual complaints of “ _Privacy_ , Jim—Can’t you guys be gross when I’m not there to see it?”

 

“Stop kissing in my car!”

 

Aside from the car and the update to his ID, Bones receives another gift: a microchip.

 

He rolls up the left sleeve of his shirt to show them the small bump near the crook of his elbow, a small mound paler than the rest of his skin. Jim gingerly touches it, feeling the hardness of the tracker beneath. “Now that I no longer have one of the guardians watching over me during training, they gave me this thing to make sure I don’t run away,” Bones says as he rolls down his sleeve. It doesn’t matter that it’s hidden; Spock can still see it in his mind’s eye, so small yet so ominous. He glances at Jim and only has to take one look at the grim expression on his face to know that he’s thinking about the same thing.

 

“Can’t you…cut it out?” Jim asks.

 

“Well, technically I can and I know how without destroying anything important, but it apparently alerts security as soon as the chip registers that it’s no longer inside you,” Bones says and Jim looks up sharply, recognition leaping at him.

 

“Oh.”

 

And then,

 

“My class developed that microchip.”

 

“Yeah,” Bones says, not meeting his eyes. “You did.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Nothing changes much when they start dating each other.

 

Well except.

 

“Okay but I saw this on one of the shows Bones and I were watching,” Jim tells him. He’s excited, the way he always is whenever he learns something new about the outside world, and Spock nods, ready to try whatever Jim has planned. He closes his eyes and leans forward until he feels Jim’s mouth against his, warm and familiar.

 

Only to reel back when Jim suddenly sticks his tongue in his mouth.

 

Spock, acting on instinct, shoves him off the bed.

 

Bones won’t stop laughing about it.

 

“Maybe you’re not ready for that kind of kissing,” Bones says, not unkindly, and Spock and Jim look at each other, silently asking each other when they’ll be ready because they have to try it, don’t they?

 

Spock opens the calendar installed in his learning PADD and marks Jim's fifteenth birthday. Jim nods then passes the PADD to Bones who looks at it then looks at them like he’s ready to smack the PADD over their heads.

 

_Jim is allowed to “kiss me with tongue” on his fifteenth birthday._

“That is _not_ what I meant.” But it’s clear Bones doesn’t know much about the topic either.

 

The thing is, they don’t have anyone to ask. None of the files about puberty and being a teenager discuss having romantic relationships with each other, but there are a lot of discussions about hormones and body changes. The donors shy away from relationships, although Spock is aware that they don’t shy away from sex—he’s heard some of them in the bathrooms, the sounds animalistic and strange but mostly desperate. One of the nurses had once left a PADD with a romance novel in it and he and Jim, during their physical exam, had skimmed it, Jim giggling at the sexual parts in the book. The novel mentions that it’s supposed to feel good and that it shouldn’t be hurried, not like way the older kids do it. That it shouldn’t be quick or desperate or—

 

“Like you’re trying to own your body. It makes you forget sometimes. Forget that it doesn’t belong to you, that is,” Max Torrhen says when Jim asks about it. He’s almost eighteen and even though he doesn’t say it out loud, Spock knows that it didn’t make him forget what he is.  

 

Spock doesn’t want to do it knowing they won’t have enough time.

 

He doesn’t want to forget and then suddenly be reminded that his body is not his own.

 

“We don’t have to try everything, you know,” Jim tells him when Spock brings it up. “I mean, I know we don’t have a lot of time but it’s better if we just do things we’re okay with instead of doing things we _think_ we’re supposed to be doing. So we won’t regret it. I don’t want to hurt you and you don’t want to hurt me and the nurses say we’re too young for that stuff anyway.” Neither of them bring up the fact that they will always be too young. “This is okay for now, I think,” Jim says before kissing his cheek. “Who gives a shit about what the older kids do? I’m happy even with just holding your hand.”

 

Spock nods, relieved. And then, “However, this does not mean I am opposed to your proposal to ‘kiss me with tongue’. You may try again on your fifteenth birthday.”

 

“Are we honestly going to _schedule_ that?”

 

Again, Spock nods. It’s only three more months away, surely Jim can wait? And preferably, practice before he tries again.

 

“Okay, fine I’ll just do more research. Maybe I just did that wrong the first time—don’t look at me like that! Neither of us know what we’re doing and you pushed me off the bed even though you said I can try it.”

 

“I was unaccustomed to the sensation,” Spock explains. And then, he adds flatly, “You tasted like you hadn’t brushed your teeth.”

 

“Oh _fuck off_.”

 

The other donors mostly refer to their relationship as: Jim and Spock but they sometimes swap spit now, which, to be fair, summarizes it perfectly. “I mean you’ve been sharing a bed since you were ten and you hold hands all the time,” one of the boys points out and the others makes noises of agreement. “This was kind of expected.”

 

And, despite some awkwardness—well, actually a lot of awkwardness; neither of them want to be reminded of that time Spock sneezed in Jim’s mouth when he leaned in to kiss him just as Jim was about to tell him about their current lessons in his engineering class—despite that, it does feel like the most natural thing in the world to do. Later, Spock will wonder why it feels like instinct. Why it feels like a James Kirk’s mouth just fits well with a Spock’s. He wonders if his previous versions or if other versions like him have something like this: a boy who holds his hand and kisses him and tells him constantly that he’s happy to be with him.

 

Did his original have something like this? Did the original James Kirk and the original Spock love each other?

 

Maybe. Or maybe not. He looks at their intertwined hands and thinks that despite the circumstances, in this way, he’s luckier than the rest of them.

 

Some of the nurses think it’s cute, but the way they talk about his relationship with Jim makes his skin crawl. They think it’s cute, but in the way someone thinks a dog that does tricks is cute, and Spock sometimes has the urge to let go of Jim’s hand whenever they take their physical exams together. But he doesn’t. The nurses are better than the guardians who purse their lips at their joined hands and tell them, “You do realize you’re not going to be able to spend your last days together, right? You rarely get donors from the same place put in one ward.”

 

Spock’s response to that is to level them with the coldest look he can muster, while Jim merely smiles with all of his teeth on display, before leaning in to kiss Spock’s cheek, right in front of the guardians who squirm and look away from them, shame-faced.

 

What Spock’s learned since dating Jim is this: the lab’s management hates seeing them display affection towards each other. He can see it on their faces—their confusion, their disgust, but mostly, he relishes in the shame and self-loathing he can see in their eyes. That one of their experiments can love and feel and act like one of them, well, it humiliates them.

 

It’s not enough to get the management to stop treating them like store-bought items, but still, it’s a start.

 

“Oh you two act like an old married couple,” the night nurse comments cheerfully, glancing at the scale that records Jim’s weight. Spock is sitting on the exam table, waiting patiently for Jim to finish so they can leave, a glossy magazine spread on his lap, and he pauses from turning the next page to focus on her. “You’re embarrassing me.”

 

_Embarrassed?_

_Embarrassed about what exactly?_

“You’re in peak health,” she says absentmindedly as she reads Jim's chart.  “Someone’s going to pay good money for those lungs of yours, dear.”

 

Jim and Spock look over her head, eyes automatically finding each other, already knowing what the other is thinking.

 

_You should be._

_You should be very embarrassed, indeed._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jim, upon turning fifteen, immediately grabs Spock by the waist and sets out to finally demonstrate months of research—research that’s actually just hours watching shows teenagers outside apparently like, studying how the actors’ mouths moved and trying to figure out what would feel good based on the script.

 

(“Okay but that looks disgusting,” Bones said at one point, pulling a face as the actors on screen did something that Jim could only think of as ‘eating each other’s faces’. It didn’t look fun but according to the movie, it was supposed to be fun.

 

“He’s practically _eating_ her _chin._ Is that supposed to be romantic?”

 

“Well, I guess. I mean, the genre says romance.”

 

Jim considered doing _that_ to Spock then decided that Spock would probably punch his teeth in if he did it, so he scratched it off from his list of possible kissing demonstrations.)

 

Spock blinks.

 

“Better?”

 

“Much better,” Spock replies. He touches his lower lip with wonder and Jim only has enough time to give himself a mental high-five before Spock’s hooking his arms around Jim’s shoulders, pulling him down for another kiss.

 

Someone, of course, walks in on them, because they do share a room with ten other boys, a fact that the others keep saying Jim and Spock (well, mostly Jim) probably forget—or most likely, disregard. The boy sighs then, following Bones’ suggestion, throws a pillow at them.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When they were children, someone had spread a rumor about deferrals. Spock has no idea who the person who’d said it first was or if they’d succeeded, but the rumor remained, a parting gift from the donor who’d spread it.  The rumor is this: if you can prove you’re in love, you can apply for a deferral.

 

You can even postpone your donations. Indefinitely.

 

Jim is quiet at first when Spock tells him about it. His thumb rubs back and forth at Spock’s side. Spock has his head set over Jim’s chest where he can hear his heart beating, slow and strong and steady.

 

And then, Jim says, “That’s not true.”

 

“No,” Spock answers. He’s always known it isn’t true. He’s a Spock, he’s meant to be rational and there’s no logic in deferring donations just because of love. Love has no benefit to the Empire.

 

But it’s a nice thought, as illogical as it may be.

 

“But suppose it were true,” Jim starts, and Spock smiles against Jim’s skin. Vulcan donors aren’t supposed to smile so publicly and he doesn’t, not usually, but he smiles for Jim all the time. It’s hard not to.

 

“We would succeed.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mrs Eliza resigns when summer rolls by.

 

She hasn’t been their teacher since they went to their specialized classes, but Jim stops by her classroom to say goodbye since out of all the guardians, she was the nicest one and had never flinched away from the topic of them being clones, looking them right in the eye whenever she said that yes, this is going to happen to them and no there’s nothing they can do about it, but with a tone of self-disgust that assured Jim that at least there’s one outsider who doesn’t agree with the Donor Program.  Spock follows close behind and, for a reason unbeknownst to them, Bones as well. “She wasn’t your teacher,” Jim pointed out, curious, and Bones had given them a brief explanation about her helping with the carers’ training, something Spock did not wholly believe but one that Jim did.

 

“He’s just stressed, Spock,” Jim had told him, and Spock couldn’t argue with that. Bones won’t admit it but it’s clear being a professional carer is starting to take its toll on him—he comes back from the wards he visits smelling like blood and smoke and carrying someone else’s burden on his shoulders. Sometimes he brings things for them—small trinkets that won’t trigger the metal detector installed in the front of the main gate—things like diet-approved snacks for the older kids and toys for the younger children, but ones Bones himself won’t make use of. Jim and Spock don’t use any of the things Bones’ brings either; it’s not hard to figure out they’re the belongings of the donors in his charge who’d completed.

 

“Maybe he just wants some refresher points.”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

The classroom is cleared of the numerous potted plants Mrs Eliza had liked to keep around, and for a moment, Spock halts, jarred by how empty it looks, how _changed_ it is. Almost nothing in the lab changes. The residents—the specimens—yes, of course, they’re always changing, replaced every time one of them turns eighteen—but never their containers. She’s still packing away some of the decorations when they enter, but she stops when she sees them and crosses over the room to hug Jim tightly then, after a moment’s hesitation, pats Spock on the shoulder. “I’m going to miss you,” she says and they both jerk at the sincerity in her voice. “Especially you, Jim, oh you were a handful.”

 

“ _Are_ a handful,” Spock corrects and Jim sticks his tongue out at him.

 

“Remember when you used to stick that little badge of yours to your shirt?” she says casually, and Spock narrows his eyes at her tone. “Do you still have it?”

 

“Yeah,” Jim answers. He flicks his eyes to Spock, one eyebrow raised in a question. “I keep it with me. Do you know what it is?”

 

“An old good luck charm,” she explains. She tucks her long black hair behind her ear, and smiles, almost sadly.

 

“Keep it with you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“What did she mean by that?”

 

“Maybe it’s expensive,” Bones offers. It’s the first thing he’s said to them since Mrs Eliza called him into her office.  Whatever they talked about obviously upset him but Jim forbade Spock from asking. “Maybe you can trade it and get money.”

 

“Yeah I don’t know how I’m going to need money when the only way I’ll ever get out of here is for my donations,” Jim says deadpan and Spock scowls at him. Blatantly mentioning their inevitable donations is an unspoken taboo in their relationship, and Jim shoots him an apologetic grin. The badge in his hand is covered in a thin layer of dust, from where it had been tucked underneath the mattress of Jim’s bed. He hasn’t touched it since they were thirteen, hasn’t looked at it since one of the older Alice Goswamis kissed their cheeks goodbye before following the carer outside the lab, stiff-lipped and head held high with feigned bravado.

 

“Maybe it’s really a good luck charm,” Jim muses. He places the badge on the curve of Spock’s cheek, the points of it poking at his skin, chuckling when Spock swats his hand away. “I liked the teacher who gave this to me. She was nice. Said I reminded her of her brother or something.”

 

Using a needle pilfered from the clinic, Jim pokes a hole on the top of the badge then loops a thin string through it, creating a crude necklace. He hangs it around his neck then stands there, hands on his hips, the badge gleaming even underneath the dingy light of the dorm.

 

“Suits you,” Bones says.

 

“Yeah,” Jim murmurs, looking down at it. “It does.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

On one of his days working outside as a carer, Bones returns to the lab with his usual small bag of gifts, the usual thin coat of ash on his jacket, and an unusual bruise that covers his left cheek. “What the fuck—” Jim starts, but Bones ducks away before can touch it.

 

“One of my patients went into a fit,” he explains. “My face was in the way.”

 

“It’s hideous,” Jim says. “Can’t you get the nurses to put something on that? It looks like it hurts.”

 

“The clinic only caters to our medical needs if our wounds will affect our internal organs,” Spock pipes in, his mind automatically pulling out one of the rules he memorized when he was younger. He startles upon realizing what he just said. Bones and Jim are looking at him in shocked horror.

 

“I—I was merely stating facts.”

 

“Yeah. Facts,” Jim replies, sounding hollow, and Spock feels it—shame rooting deep inside him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“No but I’m betting you I’ll make it past my third donation,” Quentin Morgan brags. He’s eight-years-old and a Class C and beside him, another Quentin Morgan, aged ten, snorts in disagreement.

 

“You’re a Size S,” the ten-year-old Quentin, a size L, argues. “You’ll complete on your first donation.” He mimes pulling something out of his belly then draws a finger over his neck, sticking his tongue out in the same manner as the dead dog in that cartoon they saw earlier.

 

The table fills with children’s laughter, more of them clamoring about their donations and betting about tenacity. Across them, Bones stabs at his meal, his mouth set in a firm line. Jim glances at Spock, then carefully, slowly, lays a hand over Bones’ arm.

 

“Bones.”

 

_Bang!_

 

Heads swivel to their direction. Bones’, fist still on the table, turns to the group of children at his right. They look back at him, mouths open in shock.

 

“You are more than your job.” Bones grits his teeth. “Don’t you dare talk about yourselves like that.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“A typical carer would never say that we’re anything _but_ our jobs.”

 

“No.” Spock can only make out the shape of Bones in the dark room, huddled on the bed across theirs. Jim’s propped against the headboard. “If it makes me a shitty carer then so be it.”

 

“You’re not a shitty carer,” Jim argues.

 

“You’re just different and that’s a good thing.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t think I can be a carer for very long anymore.”

 

Jim stops eating. “Bones,” he says, but he can’t find anything else.

 

Spock fills in for him. “You’ll start donating as soon as you end your career,” he points out and Bones’ only reply to that is a shrug, careless.

 

He’s nineteen-years-old, one of the oldest residents of the lab, his job keeping him safe from donations.

 

It mustn’t be easy, Spock muses. No amount of travel privileges, no amount of gifts can erase the never-ending guilt of growing up while your friends never do.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They greet the coming of winter with a grimness that doesn’t fully disappear, no matter how many times they try to make light of the situation. Spock, five months older than Jim, is less than a month away from his eighteenth birthday.  He looks at the calendar in his PADD, and fear spikes through him, sudden and unfamiliar once more. A phantom ache spreads from the old scar from his first surgery and he presses his hand flat against it, the raised tissue rough beneath his palm, a reminder for more to come.

 

He calls for Jim.

 

He sits them down then leans against him, their foreheads pressed together, Jim’s hands circling Spock’s wrists, thumbs pressing into flesh and bone and the soft thrumming of his pulse.

 

“When I’m gone,” he starts and Jim’s breath hitches, his hands gripping tighter on Spock’s wrists. “Take care of yourself. Don’t do anything rash. Don’t go before your time.”

 

“No.”

 

“Jim.”

 

Jim grabs his face and kisses him hard. “I can’t promise that I’ll cooperate with them. You can’t make me do that.”

 

He stares at him and sees Jim, at nine, screaming and fighting the nurses who’d dragged him to his physical exams, his small fists coming out bruised and bloody.

 

_You can’t make me do anything! You can’t!_

 

There’s stubbornness on Jim’s face and Spock leans in to try and kiss it away.

 

“Then just take care of yourself. Jim. Please.”

 

“I can’t. I can’t if I don’t know where you are—don’t make me say any promises—don’t make me do it.”

 

He’s kissing him, each kiss a hard press of desperation against his mouth, and Spock welcomes each one.

 

“I love you.”

 

Kiss.

 

“I love you.”

 

Kiss.

 

“I don’t want to let you go. I never want to.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You can’t ask to be someone’s carer, can you?”

 

“No, the affiliation assigns you to your donors; you don’t get to choose.” Bones stops from reading the files of his donors, realization jolting through him, and he turns around to glower at Jim.

 

“Even if I could choose, I wouldn’t ask to be Spock’s carer,” he says. He softens his tone when he sees Jim flinch. Away from Spock, he allows himself to break—shoulders slumped, a perpetual mask of grief worn over his face—and Bones doesn’t know what to do with it.

 

He knows how to soothe his donors, knows when to give them medicine and when to lift their moods, but he doesn’t know how to stop someone’s heart from breaking.

 

“I don’t want to be the one to see his last breath, Jim. It shouldn’t be me.”

 

“No.” Jim wipes at his eyes, shoulders shaking. Bones doesn’t even hesitate—he slings an arm around him and pulls him in.

 

“It should be me. I should be there.”

 

“I know. I know and I’m sorry,” Bones murmurs, stroking Jim’s back in a vain attempt to sooth him, pulling every trick he’s learned during training to comfort him.

 

Nothing works and he hates himself, guilt and self-loathing burning in his gut as Jim sobs and sobs and sobs.

 

* * *

 

 

They’re seventeen when the carer shows up at the lab, touching her hand to the database where the donor residents’ names are registered. Joshua Wes who’d turned eighteen four days ago and is officially the oldest person in the dorm who isn’t in the carer affiliation, breathes deeply then stands up, ready to walk out when the intercom crackles and the tinny voice of the carer floods the room.

 

The name spoken isn’t Joshua Wes.

 

“I’m here for James Kirk Version 2.5, Build number: I-2551670, Size M, Class R.”

 

Jim pauses the PADD they’re using for the movie. “What? Did they mention my name?” he asks, and the several faces around him only reply with shocked expressions. He looks behind him, finding Spock’s eyes.

 

And—

 

“Oh,” Jim goes, all of his breath leaving him as reality slams into him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“This isn’t right! He shouldn’t be chosen yet—it’s not yet his time!”

 

“Spock, no—don’t!”

 

“Let me go!” He twists his body, hands scrambling backwards to try and pull Bones off, but his hold is too tight, too practiced for Spock to even make a dent in his escape. The guardian is watching him with disgust, the rarely-used phaser all the guardians have already placed in one hand. But Spock doesn’t care—he can only see Jim in the main lobby, Jim who’s nodding along to whatever the carer is saying, Jim who’s about to leave him.

 

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. He’s supposed to leave first, not Jim, not Jim who never deserved this, not his Jim, not him. He’d been preparing himself for months, planning his departure and talking with Bones to take care of Jim while he’s gone, but he never expected this because this never should have been a possibility.

 

Jim isn’t looking at him. He approached the carer, almost calmly, almost accepting, and Spock hates him for it because this isn’t his Jim. His Jim told him he’ll fight back and hurt anyone who gets between them and Spock hates him.

 

_He’s calm because he never wanted you to go before him. He never wanted to feel what you’re feeling right now._

 

He hates him he hates him he hates him.

 

 _Look at me! Come back here and look at me! You said you never wanted to let me go you_ said _!_

 

“Spock, you need to calm down! You’re in danger of overworking yourself—Vulcans can’t handle extreme emotion—Spock, goddamnit, you’re going to fucking kill yourself!”

 

And finally, Jim looks at him, eyes wide in fear and Spock hates him. He’s about to leave, about to die, and still, he fears for Spock’s safety? He hates him.  

 

He loves him. He loves him so much it _hurts._

He twists and manages to catch Bones’ shin with his foot, kicking him until Bones doubles over, and Spock runs, ignoring Bones’ warning cry, ignoring the guardian who raises the phaser at him—

 

“STOP!” Jim’s stepped in front of the phaser, hands raised in surrender.

 

“Just give me time!” Jim turns to the carer. “Please just give me time to say goodbye!”

 

The carer sighs, exasperated, then looks at her watch. “We’re running on a tight schedule,” she snips but then stops when she looks at them, and Spock sees the familiar flash of shame cross her face. “You have fifteen minutes,” she says. She backs away from them, hurrying to leave, but Spock’s barely even registered her departure.

 

Jim opens his arms and Spock runs to him, wrapping his arms around him tightly, practically climbing onto his lap as he attempts to remove any space between them but it’s not enough; it will never be enough.

 

“Please don’t please don’t go don’t leave me Jim don’t leave me alone.”

 

“I have to,” Jim murmurs, pressing kisses against his hair, his cheeks, wherever he can reach. His voice is shaking, the way he sounds when he’s about to cry, but no tears spill. He plants a kiss on Spock’s mouth and Spock hates it because it tastes of goodbye and it _shouldn’t_. “I love you, I love you so much. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I will never regret this.”

 

“It’s not yet your time—this isn’t right—you shouldn’t—”

 

“I _have_ to.”

 

_It’s our duty._

“I won’t go down without a fight, sweetheart, you know that, don’t you? But you have to let me go now.”

 

_No no no no_

“They’ll hurt you if you don’t. Please, Spock.”

 

_They’re already hurting me._

He can hear someone speaking—the carer, telling them that it’s time to go—and Spock panics, his hands tightening around Jim, hard enough to bruise. And Jim—Jim’s fighting him, trying to pry his fingers off from where they’re curled around the front of his shirt.

 

“No, Jim, don’t go please don’t go!”

 

“Spock, you have to let me go.” He’s crying now, breath hitching, a horrible terrible sound that Spock never wants to hear come from him but he can’t stop it.

 

Another guardian’s come and they’re pulling him off him—Jim and the guardian both working together to remove him—and finally, finally they manage and he isn’t holding anything anymore. Spock starts screaming, loud enough to draw the other donors from their dorms, pale-faced and fearful—and Jim is leaving, walking away with the carer, the door closing behind them. The guardian holding him swears and says, “Oh for fuck’s sake you knew he was going to die anyway. What’s all this screaming for?”

 

And Spock stops.

 

The guardian’s hold loosens on him as soon as he stops fighting. “There,” the man says. “That’s better.”

 

He’s smiling.

 

Spock draws his arm back and meets his smile with his fist.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Usually they take the heart last.” The doctor pauses, remembering. “But sometimes, if the demand is high enough, they take the heart immediately so there are donors who complete on their first donation, not because they’re just bad at their jobs, but because they’re simply too good at it. I mean, if the organs are very high quality wouldn’t you want to get them already instead of waiting for yours to start not working properly? Some might call it heartless but money usually shuts up people who disagree.” He chuckles to himself. “That’s a funny one isn’t it? Heartless.”

 

He turns to her, smile freezing at what he sees in her eyes—the unmistakable look of cold rage.

 

But it only last for a beat and she smiles, her hazel eyes folding as her mouth stretches into a wide grin that has all of her teeth showing, and the doctor brushes it aside—he’s probably just tired; he may have just imagined it.

 

“Yeah,” his patient agrees airily. They could be talking about the weather. “It _is_ heartless.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Have you ever thought about what you want to do if you ever had the chance to get off this planet?”

 

Spock blinks. Jim hasn’t talked about escaping since they were children.

 

“No,” he admits. He doesn’t know what you can do out there. Bones shows up sometimes with news clippings hidden inside his clothes so the guardians at the gate won’t discover it, and he and Jim had read news of the outside fervently. Some cities where the rich live—where their _clients_ live—remain untouched by war but a majority of Tarsus IV is in a constant state of fighting. “It’s getting worse,” Bones said, which of course means that the demand for donors is getting higher because it doesn’t just mean that the elite needs them out of greed, no they’re medical supplies for war as well.

 

A life inside the lab means a slow death, and a life outside it means a quick one, never knowing when exactly you’ll complete. A situation like that doesn’t leave enough room for imagination.

 

“I have. A bit. My short stay at Riverside made me think of some things.”

 

_I’m nine and I’m gonna be a spaceman when I grow up!_

“What did you think about?”

 

“Oh, well.” Jim leans against him and Spock immediately makes room, Jim’s arm sliding around his waist as he tucks against his side. “Stop the Donor Program for one thing; that’s the one I always think about. Eat junk food like in those shows Bones and I watch. Travel and see places and go where others haven’t been before.” He reaches up to curl his hand over Spock’s cheek. “Marry you.”

 

He says it with confidence of someone’s who’s hazy on the reality of marriage. The way a child would say it.

 

Spock raises one eyebrow. “I’ve seen the weddings on your shows. I refuse to wear white.” He tries to picture it but crosses the thought out of his mind as soon as an image comes up. White doesn’t suit Jim either.

 

“Nah I don’t think that suits us.” They both grimace, the two of them conjuring an imaginary wedding, like the one they saw in a movie, all white and cold with its formality. “But the rest of it is nice. Exchange rings and vows in front of everyone.” His smile turns mischievous. “Kiss you in front of a crowd and scandalize Bones.”

 

“Which you already do on a daily basis. The kissing, I mean.”

 

“Yup but at least no one’s going to be screaming at us to kiss somewhere else because it’s appropriate in weddings.”

 

Spock’s mouth twitches into a small smile. “Those are good plans.”

 

“Dreams, more like.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I would never wear a ring.”

 

Jim laughs. “No, you wouldn’t. But maybe you can wear this—no, hey close your eyes! It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

 

“Jim, we spend almost every hour together when we’re not in our respective classes. There’s nothing you can do that can surprise me.”

 

“Hey, I like challenges. Just close your eyes.”

 

He sighs then does what Jim wants, his other senses quickly heightening at the lack of sight. He can hear Jim moving about the room, humming to himself. The bed dips with his weight, signaling his return, and Spock feels something soft brush against his neck.

 

When he opens his eyes, he finds Jim’s badge settled over his chest.

 

“That’s better than a ring, I think,” Jim says, pressing a smile on his nape.

 

Spock touches the badge.

 

“Now we just need to exchange stupid vows or something,” Jim says. He’s about to add something else but Spock turns and catches his mouth with his own, swallowing the startled sound Jim makes. He pulls away first, laughing underneath Spock.

 

“Wait I think the vows go first and—shit we only ever get cake when one of us has a birthday but we can make do without one—wait.” He sits up and Spock slides off his lap. His eyes have lit up with excitement. “We need a witness for the kiss—BONES, GET YOUR ASS IN HERE!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he wakes, it isn’t with slowness. There isn’t the spreading sensation of slowly becoming aware of his surroundings, no moment when he feels his body waking with him, a split second before his mind does. He wakes with a gasp, pain hitting him all at once, and distantly, he hears a familiar voice swear.

 

He manages to place himself in less than ten seconds, the sharpness of unfamiliarity immediately erasing any of his fatigue. His chest hurts like it’s been burned but when he lifts his shirt, the skin is smooth and undamaged, so Spock quickly pushes it away from his concerns. He can smell old gum and the faint scent of artificial lemon.

 

He’s in Bones’ car. He’s outside and Spock sits up, ignoring the pain in his chest as he twists as much as the seatbelt strapped over him will allow, to looks out the passenger’s window. It’s rolled down and outside, he can see gaunt trees and soft white flakes that look a bit like snow. _Ash_ , a voice in his mind supplies helpfully. From the fighting—Bones always carries it with him whenever he comes back from the wards.

 

The ash never reaches the lab.

 

“We’re far away already,” Bones confirms. “You’ve been out for hours.”

 

“What—”

 

“They thought you’d died,” Bones tells him, voice flat. “When they stunned you. The setting was on low but you were so worked up your system didn’t take it too well and you went into some kind of trance—which apparently, _is_ possible even for Vulcan donors but no one knows that because the chances of it happening are less than 10%--and shit if I hadn’t seen Sol go through that I would have thought you really were dead.” He shudders. “They were going to just burn you but I made up some bullshit story about how the factories for Vulcan donors needed a specimen that still had all of its organs—and the head doctor is a fucking idiot who doesn’t care about his job so thank the gods for that—they let me take you. And your life signs were so low you didn’t even register when the car passed through the main gate’s detectors.”

 

“You—you snuck me out.”

 

He looks at Bones’ left arm. The sleeve of his shirt’s been pulled down but the inside of his elbow is dark with blood. Inside one of the cup holders, a scalpel sits, shiny with blood. “I bandaged it as best as I could but I’m driving and the stitches keep ripping out,” Bones says. “I couldn’t do it as cleanly as I would have liked—had to destroy it while it was inside me but at least I didn’t damage anything important—there were so many chances of me losing mobility and we can’t afford that now. Jim’s class did their job well.”

 

Jim.

 

He sucks in his breath, feeling like he’s been sucker punched. Jim is gone, he’s gone and he doesn’t know where he is and—

 

“Spock,” Bones says sharply. “Try not to work yourself up again. I didn’t go through all this trouble to sneak you out just for you to fuck up your system.”

 

“Jim isn’t here.” He makes a horrible agonized sound that has Bones turning away, flinching. “He’s going to donate first and it shouldn’t be like that. Why did they take him from me—we still had time.”

 

Jim, his Jim, who’d once told him no one can take his parts away, his Jim who he’d have followed anywhere but not now, not when Spock doesn’t know where he is, not when it was never supposed to go like this.

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

“You were screaming so much you didn’t hear what that carer was saying,” Bones tells him. “The only reason they take someone before their time is if they’re the last available copy currently alive. Don’t you get it, Spock? Jim, _your_ Jim, is the only James Kirk currently in existence and will continue to stay that way if the Donor Program doesn’t get its way. The factory that had his blueprints was destroyed and all his future copies were killed. They took him so that they can make new blueprints, not so he can donate, not yet anyway, and that’s _worse_.”

 

His voice is shaking when he gets to the end but he continues, holding Spock’s gaze as he adds,

 

“And it’s all our fault.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You had nothing to do with this.”

 

“No. I did. I’m not like you.” Bones is staring straight ahead. His hands are gripping the steering wheel hard, his knuckles bleached white beneath his skin.

 

“I’m not a clone.”

 

Silence falls, heavy as an anvil, and Spock opens his mouth to try and lift it but nothing comes out. It isn’t true, he thinks, it shouldn’t be true because Bones has lived with them since he was twelve—and yet, the part of his mind that’s always embraced facts before anything else lays the evidence out for him.

 

The subtle differences in his features, his reluctance to mention his previous lab by name, his knowledge of the war, his self-loathing of his career as a carer despite knowing what the job entails, his connection to Mrs Eliza, the badge, Bones meeting her and refusing to talk to them of what it was about.

 

_Was there a malfunction when they were designing you?_

_You’re not a shitty carer. You’re just different._

 

It’s too much to process all at once, numerous questions forming in his mind as he looks at Bones, but all that comes out of his mouth is, “You’re a Leonard McCoy.”

 

Bones snorts but there’s no humor to it. He just looks resigned. “By name, yeah, I’m the sixth Leonard McCoy in the family. Leonard John McCoy though. But I don’t have the same genetic makeup as the man I was named after; I just look a lot like him—enough to pass off as his clone.

 

“There are entire planets out there who want this Donor Program to stop. The Donor Program is a _weapon_. As long as you exist, as long as you can extend the life expectancy of the most experienced military leaders, then we lose. But they wanted to just incinerate the planets where it’s being done. They _have_ already done it and it was successful but it didn’t feel right.

 

“The security measures around the labs aren’t for you; they’re to keep people out so you won’t be stolen away and your locations are hard to find—the only way you can is if you go inside yourself. Most of us who didn’t want the rebellion to simply bomb the labs and factories come from the families of your originals, so some of us snuck in to work at the labs or we pretended to be clones so we could send feedback and prove that you deserve to live. I went into the carer affiliation like the others so we could communicate while we were in the wards.”

 

“Mrs Eliza—”

 

“Inna,” Bones says. “Her real name’s Inna Sulu. We both went into the lab willingly—her as a teacher and guardian, and me as a donor—and she helped changed my records so it wouldn’t show that I’m not a clone. Before she left she told me that the rebellion didn’t agree and that our method was just taking too much time. She told me we were _failing_ and I couldn’t accept it so I went against the wishes of the leader of our group and stayed because I really was planning to sneak you and Jim out as soon as I sent in my resignation from being a carer. Remember when I went back to the lab with that bruise on my face? That was his response and their other response was to start bombing factories.”

 

Quietly, he whispers, “I was going to save you. _All of you_.”

 

Bones stops. He ducks his head; his shoulders are shaking.

 

He isn’t looking at Spock.

 

“Look at me.”

 

Bones looks at him. His eyes are red.

 

“You failed,” Spock says, relishing the flicker of shame that crosses Bones’ face. He turns his head to the window and hardens his heart, ignoring the sounds of Bones crying, embracing his anger and his hurt, wrapping his hands around them and refusing to let go.

 

Outside, the sky stretches on, an endless blue.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s dark by the time Bones speaks again. Thy view from his window has moved from gaunt tress to the skeleton of a village, still smoking from whatever bomb had killed it. Bones starts to roll the windows up, but Spock growls in protest. “Spock,” he sighs. “Spock, come on.”

 

“No.”

 

“You told me to take care of Jim when you thought you were going to go first, but now I’m doing Jim a favor so let me take care of you!” he snaps. “There’s too much smoke out there; it could hurt you and Jim didn’t want that.”

 

“Don’t you dare talk about Jim.” _You lied to him, you lied to all of us but he loved you and trusted you and you took advantage of that how dare you!_

 

Bones softens at whatever he finds on his face. “Spock, we all know you loved him—”

 

“ _Love_.”

 

“What?”

 

Spock levels him with a look and Bones shies away from the intensity of it “They took him away from me too early. Because of you,” Spock says. His voice is low but Bones hears every word, hears the anger and hurt and spite wrapped around each one. “They took him away from me, but my memories are one of the few things that I can call my own and that is something this despicable program can never possess. We defied them by loving each other and I will not stop loving him, not even when they distribute my vital organs and burn my body to ashes and whoever takes my heart will just have to deal with the burden of not having Jim near it.”

 

“And I know that,” Bones fires back and Spock snarls, ready to fight, when Bones adds, “I know that—everyone saw how much you love each other. And that’s why I’m trying to get my group to find him.”

 

Spock stops, the fight in him disappearing.

 

“They’ll keep him alive longer so they can experiment and start making more clones and it’s going to hurt a lot but he’ll be alive and it will give us enough time to find him. The others don’t want to risk it but I’m doing my best to convince them that Jim’s worth it, okay Spock? I sent the messages already.”

 

He leans forward to open the glove compartment. There’s a PADD inside which he hands to Spock. “They haven’t answered my messages yet,” Bones says and the hope Spock was feeling withers. “But if that beeps then it means they’ve found where they’re keeping him and have agreed to let me save him. But if it doesn’t I’m going to bring you back to our ship—whether you like it or not. The ship can’t move without revealing itself so it can only be used for one more time and that’s for when we leave. They’re planning to bomb Tarsus IV soon.”

 

_Bomb Tarsus IV?_

 

Spock thinks about the other kids, left behind, unaware of the war, unaware of their already limited times being cut even shorter. It must show on his face because Bones only shakes his head.

 

“I can’t save everyone, Spock.”

 

Spock nods and wraps his arms around himself, cold suddenly seeping through his bones despite the heat outside. Bones pulls something out from beneath his feet and drops it on Spock’s lap. Jim’s plaid shirt, the one he’d taken from Riley, the one he always wore when he finally grew into it. Spock’s breath catches at the sight of it.

 

He slides it over his body and warmth floods over him, down to his fingertips.

 

 “He hated it when you got cold,” Bones mutters. “I remembered that, at least.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jim’s badge hangs around his neck, sitting against his chest, and Spock feels the weight of it, heavy with importance. He pulls it out from beneath his shirt. Bones catches him but he rejects the question on Spock’s face.

 

“Not my story to tell,” he says. “But if everything goes right, you’ll meet her.”

 

“Is this the symbol of your rebellion?”

 

Bones makes a face at that. “Starfleet? No, Starfleet would never immediately bomb planets just to win; they’d always find the best and least bloody solution. At least that’s what Marion told me—she’s our resident historian. No, the rebellion doesn’t use that but we do.”

 

“You’re rebelling against the rebellion,” Spock says and Bones turns to him sharply.

 

“Sounds like something Jim would say,” he goes and Spock closes his eyes, the badge clutched tight in his hand.

 

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

 

They drive, the view from outside changing as they leave the dead village, trees springing up once more on either side of the road. They’ve been driving in circles for hours, waiting, and Bones finally stops the car, looks at Spock grimly, and opens his mouth, ready to deliver the words that Spock doesn’t want to hear.

 

_They didn’t agree, Spock. We’re not going to save Jim._

 

They don’t arrive.

 

Settled on Spock’s lap, the PADD beeps and lights up with a new message.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Officially the WORST thing I've ever written, or why the fuck did I suddenly write a spirk fic based on Never Let Me Go which is already in its own way, all sorts of fucked up.


End file.
